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PORTRAITS ("Shakspeare," Cervantes," and "Rabelais")

CAUDLE'S RETURN.

FATHER Том

TRIAL SCENE FROM THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Ingoldsby Legends)

MRS. CRAWFORD AND MISS HARPER AS MRS. FORD AND MRS. PAGE IN THE
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

J. H. HACKETT AS FALSTAFF IN HENRY IV.

241

289

"321

"353

DICK SPARROW'S RECEPTION

THE LIBRARY

OF

WIT AND HUMOR.

MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LEC

TURES.

[DOUGLAS JERROLD, the author of these inimitable Lectures, was born in London, Jan. 3, 1803. His father being manager of Sheerness theatre, his earliest impressions received a dramatic coloring. Smitten in boyhood with a passion for the sea, a midshipman's appointment was procured for him; but in a short time he quitted that service, and was presently articled to a printer. He studied diligently between the hours of labor and thus acquired a good education. While still a compositor, he made his literary début

How could such a thing have entered any man's mind ?”

There are subjects that seem like rain

itself having nothing to do with the matter.
The result of no train of thought, there is
the picture, the statue, the book, wafted,
like the smallest seed, into the brain, to
feed upon the soil, such as it may be, and
grow there; and this was, no doubt, the
accidental cause of the literary sowing and
expansion-funfolding like a night-flower
of MRS. CAUDLE.

with an anonymous essay on the opera of "Der Freis-drops to fall upon a man's head, the head chütz," which he dropped into the letter-box of the editor of the paper on which he was working. The article was handed to him to put in type, and accompanying it was a cordial editorial invitation to the unknown correspondent to contribute other articles. Mr. Jerrold's first dramatic composition, Black-Eyed Susan the most popular of dramas-was written before he was twenty-one years old. It was followed by Nell Gwynne, The Prisoner of War, Time Works Wonders, and other plays, which sustained and widened the author's fame. But his labors were by no means restricted to dramatic composition. Stories, essays, and editorials, claimed a large share of his busy life. Among the best known of his narrative pieces, are The Story of a Feather, Clovernook, St. Giles and St. James. From the second number of that famous journal, Punch, Mr. Jerrold contributed regularly to its

pages until his death, which occurred June 8, 1857.

The strongest impulse of popularity that Punch ever

received, came from the immortal Caudle Lectures; and

this is saying much when it is remembered what a brilliant galaxy of writers and draughtsmen were em

But let a jury of gentlewomen decide. It was a thick, black, wintry afternoon, when the writer stopped in the front of the play-ground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed with boys full of the Saturday's holiday. The earth seemed roofed with the oldest lead; and the wind Minories. But these happy boys ran and came, (sharp as Shylock's knife, from the jumped, and hopped and shouted, and—

To them

unconscious men in miniature!-in their own world of frolic, had no thought of the ployed upon that paper in Jerrold's time. The Curtain full-length men they would some day beLectures hold so perfectly the "mirror up to nature," come; drawn out into grave citizenship; that they are as fresh to-day as when first written, and formal, respectable, responsible. they will continue to afford delight and to point their the sky was of any or all colors; and for peculiar moral, till human nature ceases to be what it that keen east-wind-cutting the shouldernow is. But why longer detain the reader when Mrs. blades of old, old men of forty-they in Caudle is present to speak for herself? We seem to their immortality of boyhood had the redhear her emphatic tones break upon the solemn still-der faces and the nimbler blood for it. ness of the night, their monotony varied at intervals by the suppressed groans of the afflicted Job.]

VOL. I.-W. H.

And the writer, looking dreamily into that play-ground, still mused on the robust jol

1

lity of those little fellows, to whom the tax- | wine. There was, however, this difference gatherer was as yet a rarer animal than the between the wisdom and the wine. The baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so wine was always sugared; the wisdom, ignorant of the future in the knowing en- never. It was expressed crude from the joyment of the present! And the writer, heart of Mrs. Caudle, who, doubtless, still dreaming and musing, and still follow- trusted to the sweetness of her husband's ing no distinct line of thought, there struck disposition to make it agree with him. upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words-CURTAIN LECTURES.

you will see him, escaped from his proper | he was alone in his holland. Nevertheless home, straying in a neighbor's garden. How he tramples upon the heart's-ease: how, with quivering snout, he roots up lilies-oderiferous bulbs! Here he gives a reckless snatch at thyme and marjoram and here he munches violets and gillyflowers. At length the marauder is detected, seized by his owner, and driven, beaten home. To make the porker less dangerous, it is determined that he shall be ringed. The sentence is pronounced-execution ordered. Listen to his screams!

"Would you not think the knife was in his throat?

And yet they're only boring through

his nose!"

Hence, for all future time, the porker behaves himself with a sort of forced propriety for in either nostril he carries a ring. It is, for the greatness of humanity, a saddening thought, that sometimes men must be treated no better than pigs.

But Mr. Job Caudle was not of these men. Marriage to him was not made a necessity. No; for him call it if you will a happy chance-a golden accident. It is, however, enough for us to know that he was married; and was therefore made the recipient of a wife's wisdom. Mrs. Caudle, like Mahomet's dove, continually pecked at the good man's ears; and it is a happiness to learn from what he left behind that he

had hived all her sayings in his brain; and further, that he employed the mellow evening of his life to put such sayings down, that, in due season, they might be enshrined in imperishable type.

the talk continued. It was terrible to be thus haunted by a voice; to have advice, commands, remonstrance, all sorts of saws and adages still poured upon him, and no visible wife. Now did the voice speak from the curtains; now from the tester; and now did it whisper to Job from the very pillow that he pressed. "It's a dreadful thing that her tongue should walk in this manner," said Job, and then he thought confusedly of exorcism, or at least of counsel from the parish priest.

Whether Job followed his own brain, or the wise direction of another, we know not. But he resolved every night to commit to paper one curtain lecture of his late wife. The employment would, possibly, lay the ghost that haunted him. It was her dear tongue that cried for justice, and when thus satisfied, it might possibly rest in quiet. And so it happened. Job faithfully chronicled all his late wife's lectures; the ghost of her tongue was thenceforth silent, and Job slept all his after-nights in peace. When Job died, a small packet of papers was found inscribed as follows:

แ CURTAIN LECTURES

DELIVERED IN THE COURSE OF THIRTY YEARS
BY MRS. MARGARET CAUDle,

and suffered BY JOB, HER HUSBAND." That Mr. Caudle had his eye upon the future printer, is made pretty probable by the fact that in most places he had affixed the text-such text for the most part arising out of his own daily conduct to the lecture of the night. He had, also, with an instinctive knowledge of the dignity of literature, left a bank-note of very fair amount with the manuscript. Following our duty as editor, we trust we have done

THE FIRST LECTURE.

When Mr. Job Caudle was left in this briery world without his daily guide and nocturnal monitress, he was in the ripe fulness of fifty-two. For three hours at least after he went to bed-such slaves are we to habit—justice to both documents. he could not close an eye. His wife still talked at his side. True it was, she was dead and decently interred. His mind-it was a comfort to know it-could not wander on this point; this he knew. Nevertheless, his wife was with him. The Ghost of her Tongue still talked as in the life; and again and again did Job Caudle hear the monitions of by-gone years. At times, so loud, so lively, so real were the sounds, that Job, with a cold chill, doubted if he were really widowed. And then, with the movement of an arm, a foot, he would assure himself that

MR. CAUDLE HAS LENT FIVE POUNDS TO ▲

FRIEND.

"You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who'd lend you five pounds? But so it is, a wife may work and may slave! Ha, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds. As if people picked up money in the street! But you always were a fool, Mr. Caudle! I've

lity of those little fellows, to whom the tax- | wine. gatherer was as yet a rarer animal than the baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so ignorant of the future in the knowing enjoyment of the present! And the writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words-CURTAIN LECTURES.

One moment there was no living object save those racing, shouting boys; and the next, as though a white dove had alighted on the pen-hand of the writer, there was— MRS. CAUDLe.